Study: Few Afghans know about 9/11, reason for war

[yurbud]

Source: Reuters

The report by The International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) policy think-tank showed 92 percent of 1,000 Afghan men surveyed in Helmand and Kandahar know nothing of the hijacked airliner attacks on U.S. targets in 2001.

"The lack of awareness of why we are there contributes to the high levels of negativity toward the NATO military operations and made the job of the Taliban easier," ICOS President Norine MacDonald told Reuters from Washington...


Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40273302/

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This reduces the war to either some kind of tragic farce, or less poetically, a slaughter of the ignorant.

Can you punish people for a crime they don't know they committed? And if so, how do you expect them to react?

This leaves aside the whole issue of whether we are really only there to fight the last hundred al Qaeda members or whether we are actually trying to pacify a pipeline route, a motive more consistent with history and geopolitics than the sub-comic book level propaganda the bush administration cooked up and the Obama administration embarrassingly continues to parrot.

[XemaSab]

1. .

:banghead:

[Arctic Dave]

2. Killing innocent people to satisfy our bloodlust.

What a great foreign policy we have.

[BeFree]

3. heh

I dare them to put all the facts on the table. If they did that, there'd be one hell of a war. Imo.

If you look at a map of the whole region, you notice that Afghanistan is on the land side of China.

We know China matters.
So, I have to wonder, are we there to be a door closer against China?
Or are we there to be an open door to China?

[yurbud]

8. If you control the spigot, you can do either, which is why I'm surprised China isn't doing more t

to jam up our Middle East policy either directly or indirectly.

Maybe they figure we are doomed to fail so the best course is to not interfere with someone trying to commit suicide.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

4. Surely they must have heard of former president Bush and how he wanted to 'enrich' the pipeline?

[bluedigger]

5. I'm shocked!

An illiterate rural population with limited access to Western media is unaware of an historic event that took place half way around the world nearly a decade ago!:wow:

Shocked! Shocked, I say!


:shrug:

[boppers]

6. No, this has to be about a conspiracy!

There's no way a more plausible explanation would suffice!

[bluedigger]

7. What was I thinking!

:rofl:

[yurbud]

9. what's the more plausible explanation? That we went to teach these illiterate goatherds a lesson

and forgot to stop?

[lib2DaBone]

10. THere is no reason for the war.. other than to block Chinese interests from building a pipeline.

[JohnyCanuck]

11. Another benefit of educating the Afghan peasants about 9/11

They will be much less resentful of the US military blowing up their houses and making new roads through their farmland. :sarcasm:

Pentagon blows up thousands of homes in Afghanistan
Repeating the horrors of the Vietnam War
November 18, 2010

Again, from the New York Times, Nov. 16, 2010, which describes weapons as tools:

“American troops are using an impressive array of tools not only to demolish homes, but also to eliminate tree lines where insurgents could hide, blow up outbuildings, flatten agricultural walls, and carve new “military roads,” because existing ones are so heavily mined, according to journalists embedded in the area recently.

“One of the most fearsome tools is the Miclic, the M58 Mine-Clearing Line Charge, a chain of explosives tied to a rocket, which upon impact destroys everything in a swath 30 feet wide and 325 feet long. The Himars missile system, a pod of 13-foot rockets carrying 200-pound warheads, has also been used frequently for demolition work.

“Often, new military roads go right through farms and compounds, cutting a route that will keep soldiers safe from roadside bombs. In Zhare District alone, the 101st Airborne’s Second Brigade has lost 30 soldiers since last June, mostly to such bombs.”

Activists at the organization Afghanistan Rights Monitor described the destroyed homes. “These are all mud houses, quite humble houses.”

http://www.answercoalition.org/national/news/pentagon-blows-up-thousands.html

[MisterP]

12. come to think of it, if the Afghans are shown that the occupation is out of revenge,

they'll be even angrier due to the US's relentless willful and ignorant violations of local codes of feuding